Update: Fixed! The Ajax inline comment function mentioned below now works, thanks to inspiration from the StackOverflow forums and much, much fumbling around the internet, MySQL and PHP manuals!!!
There’s no denying it, I love WordPress. I guess I could end the post here. But for all of you detail-oriented people, here’s a little more in terms of technical news.
First of all, the theme you are looking at (this dark skin I call, well, Blackout) is based on a WordPress theme that was rather old and designed before the last round of improvements in the WordPress platform. I made a mistake when I decided to create my current template based on something familiar (I had used the same theme under Serendipity) rather than start fresh with a current WP theme. As a result, there are some missing elements that need to be worked around. The next theme I design will be fully up-to-date.
In the meantime, you will notice some minor issues. One of these issues lays with inline comments. If you are on the main page of this blog and click on the “Show Comments” link at the bottom of a post, you will be served that post’s comments inline, via Ajax, which isn’t a native WordPress feature. It’s quicker, does not force a full page reload and hopefully, keeps you happier.
The problem is I haven’t been able to adjust that feature for nested comments; the inline comment listing only allows you to post a generic comment to the post, one which will be listed by time of posting, at the bottom of the current list. It also does not display previous nested comments correctly.
On the other hand, if you click on a post title and open that entry by itself, the comment form at the bottom allows you to reply to a specific comment if you’d like. So basically if you reply to a comment (in a nested hierarchy – your reply being a child of a comment which is already a reply to my post), your reply will appear under its parent. But only in the page view. The inline view of the home page still fails at this.
Sorry, I am working hard to fix this but the MySQL query and PHP fix have so far eluded me…
Was that all Chinese to you? No sweat. I had to exorcise it, so writing it all down helps. I know nobody really cares about this but me. Here’s my promise, though: the next skin for this blog, within a year, will be a complete upgrade, will take advantage of all WordPress’ most advanced features and will attempt to innovate in terms of layout and readability… Until then, peace!